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3 votes
0 answers
114 views

How does tense evolve from a tenseless parent language?

Whenever someone asks something about TAM evolution, they seem to inevitably be pointed towards the World Lexicon of Grammaticalization (Kuteva et al., 2e, 2019) and The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, ...
Arcaeca's user avatar
  • 600
3 votes
2 answers
125 views

Having a hard time distinguishing between the simple and perfective aspects

It seems to me that the truth conditions for "David baked cookies" are identical to "David has baked cookies," in that both are true if at some moment of time in the past "...
m. lekk's user avatar
  • 267
13 votes
4 answers
2k views

Why is tense obligatory in some languages and not in others?

In some languages like Chinese, it isn’t imperative that the tense of the verb is explicitly marked. So if you mean an action that will occur in the future, you can still refer to it in an all-...
Julius Hamilton's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
74 views

what is the difference between reference time and event time

what is the difference between reference time and event time , also i am native Arabic speaker , i tried to translate by google translate two examples the reference time before and after event time ...
Abdelrahman Yehia's user avatar
31 votes
5 answers
9k views

Is future tense in English really a myth?

Does English really have two tenses - present and past? Some linguists argue that it is a Latinate fallacy to think that English has three tenses. Some English professors and even some native ...
Jvlnarasimharao's user avatar